Customer balance doesn't match between Breww and my accountancy provider

If the customer balance you see in Breww doesn't match the customer balance in your accountancy provider, this guide walks through the most common causes and the tools you can use to investigate and fix it.

This usually happens for one of three reasons:

  • A payment was recorded directly in your accountancy provider and hasn't been pulled back into Breww yet.

  • The integration's authorisation has lapsed, so all syncing has stopped.

  • The customer's starting balance was set incorrectly or has drifted from the provider over time.

    Work through the steps below in order — most discrepancies are resolved by the first two steps.

1. Check that the integration is still connected

Sometimes "balance not syncing" issues are actually "the integration has been disconnected". When the connection to your accountancy provider lapses (for example, after a password change, multi-factor authentication change, or because the provider's authorisation token has expired), background payment sync pauses until the integration is re-enabled.

To check and re-authorise:

  1. Head to Integrations -> Accountancy.

  2. Next to your accountancy provider, click Actions -> Configuration.

  3. If the integration shows as disconnected or asks you to reconnect, follow the prompts to re-authorise.

    Once the integration is reconnected, Breww will resume background sync automatically. You can then move on to the next steps to pull in any payments that were missed while the connection was down.

2. Run a balance audit on the customer

The fastest way to see exactly which transactions differ between Breww and your accountancy provider is to run a balance audit on the affected customer. This pulls a fresh statement from your provider and lines it up against the equivalent transactions in Breww, highlighting any mismatches.

To run a balance audit:

  1. Open the customer's record in Breww and click Orders, credit notes & payments.

  2. Open the smaller Actions dropdown under the Unallocated account payments/credits section, and click View account statement.

  3. On the customer's account statement page, click Run [provider name] balance audit (e.g. Run QuickBooks balance audit).

  4. Wait a few moments for Breww to retrieve the statement from your provider and match it against Breww's records.

    The audit will show every transaction from your provider's statement, side-by-side with the matching Breww transaction. Mismatches are highlighted, and you can filter to show only mismatches using the Show mismatches only toggle.

    Balance audits are available for accountancy providers that support retrieving customer account statements (currently Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage Accounting and Sage 200).

3. Sync recent payments for the customer

If the audit shows that a payment exists in your accountancy provider but not in Breww, you can manually pull the missing payment(s) for that specific customer without waiting for the next scheduled background sync.

To sync payments for a single customer:

  1. On the customer's account statement page, click Sync [provider name] payments (e.g. Sync QuickBooks payments).

  2. Confirm the date range in the modal that opens, then submit.

    Breww will queue a background task that pulls payments for that customer from the provider and matches them against the customer's outstanding invoices.

4. Fix the customer's starting balance

If the audit shows that Breww and your accountancy provider agree on every individual transaction but the running balance is still off, the discrepancy is in the starting balance — the balance that existed before Breww started recording transactions for that customer.

Breww can re-download starting balances from your accountancy provider in bulk:

  1. Head to Integrations -> Accountancy.

  2. Next to your accountancy provider, click Actions -> Configuration.

  3. Make sure the Sync customer balances from accountancy provider option is enabled in the sync settings.

  4. Open the integration's Tools tab and click Sync customer starting balances.

    Breww will queue a background task that pulls the latest starting balance for every customer from your accountancy provider. This usually takes a few minutes to complete, depending on how many customers you have.

A note on Sage 50 (UK)

Breww's Sage 50 (UK) integration is a manual integration — Breww generates an export file that you import into Sage 50 yourself. There is no automated sync of payments or customer balances in either direction, so customer balances in Sage 50 will not automatically match what's in Breww and have to be reconciled manually.

If you're using Sage 50 (UK), the steps in this guide for syncing payments and starting balances do not apply. See Manual accountancy integrations for how the Sage 50 export workflow operates.

Still stuck?

If you've worked through the steps above and the balance is still wrong, see Upload issues for guidance on resolving sync messages, or get in touch with Breww support with a screenshot of the balance audit output for the affected customer.

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